Moonlight
by MuddyWolf
Summary: Based on the theory that Alexander Anderson isn't just a regenerator. Here's another day at the orphanage. NOT the werewolf theory: sorry for the confusion.


Legal Stuff: Alexander Anderson is copyright to Hellsing and its affiliates.On the sole premise that there aren't many fics with Anderson being peaceful at least for a while. : ) and that that's a really cool accent---I wanted to try it out---oo So, this fic is here. oo (EoAR better get done after this)

Fun phonetic craziness.

Rated: PG Started: 6/28/04 Finished:

Moonlight

by Blue9Tiger

The blazing Italian sun scorching that multimorph glacier stared intently at the skirmish on the unmowed turf below. The field was covered in sweat, blood, and tears, pitting brother against brother---and making for a lot of divits on the orphanage yard that doubled as a football field.

"Pass it to Father!"

The participants jogged or sprinted in mobile formation, every part of their bodies dripping in the sweat of the game and reeking to high Heaven. But they didn't care. They were snagged in the moment--the ecstasy of the game---the adrenaline, the choking heat, the whizzing ball, the occasional dung pile flowering the field. Half the boys swarmed in a horde for the checkered treasure, and the defense idled as the prize wheeled farther away from them. En masse, the offense was wherever the ball was at the moment. And at that moment it was under the massive heel of a cassocked man, who looked as if he was enjoying the chase as much as the kids were, wearing a half-open smile that showed deliberate cautiousness. But the boys were too focused on the ball to notice anything out of the ordinary with their scruffy Scottish caretaker, who they now ambushed and with their sheer number grounded.

With mock ferocity and one of those piercing yells that indicate robust kids ensnared in the thrill of the game, the boys dove for the priest, turning the football game into the OTHER football an ocean away, hurling their squirming bodies upon his massive frame and practically grabbing for the ball. "Ay---no far, lads---tha's cheatin'--!!!-" the cleric protested good-naturedly, while the boys in a frenzied calculation formed and executed their attack plan.

Something so formidable as a mammoth isn't to be attacked directly. Being on the losing side so many times made the boys inventive, and so---they ripped off his glasses.

They say the time of day, time of night controls certain behavioral patterns. Woe betide he who stripped the priest of his glasses in the dead of night. That they were children, that they were practically his children---might not save them from the enraged beast.

But since it wasn't night....

"Ye took me eyes! Oh, tha' was worthy of th' Devil, tha' was---are ye soo hasty tae be oon tha' path?"

"But you said yourself, Father--" A thud as the offense reclaimed the ball and booted it across the field, where the defense had woken up and tightened their formation, their eye on the mud-enveloped ball. "--a game's different!!"

By now he was already up and speeding off after the ball, deliberately avoiding the wee men that raced off after their comrade, the ones closer to babes laughing and screaming wildly amidst the priest's sonorous bellow, immersed in good feeling and friendly jesting.

"Ah did sae it---but robbin' ae sightless priest o' his eyes?"

On the surface. The blackest turmoil boiled underneath.

_ Thou shall not lie. Thas' anuther one broken. Are ye testin' th' Almighty? _

_ It wouldn' be th' first tiyme...oor th' las'._

_ Nepis jus' took ae har' fall. Didn' see th' rock in his wae._

_ Foor th' love ouf all thas' holy----_

_ Deliver them froom Evil._

Some of the boys that didn't see Nepis fall rushed past the priest as he stopped with precision unusual for such a burly man and kneeled down to check on the muddy boy. He grasped him gently around the arm----sure enough, there was a cut. Not that his eyes had to confirm anything: he had already smelled it as soon as the boy fell.

"Are ye hurt, laddie?"

A mad hunger in his eyes seethed at the red glob dangling from the wound, that cursed drop looking like Eden's Apple itself. Sin was staring him in the face---which he could sense was paling. Nepis was half-laughing now. What was so funny? Was he laughing because he was hurt? Was he---

"Father Anderson, could you---stop--?"

Stop what? Eh? Oh. It was then that Paladin Alexander Anderson realized that he was drooling on the kid.

Drooling out of hunger...out of bloodlust_....God's woork and Satan's in th' same instant.._

_ God help me, if ah'm still in yoor Grace.._

_ Half o' me, if it's clean._

He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, burying his ashamed revulsion in the black fabric,leaving the rotten, filthy signs of his unholy hunger on the garb of his holy vocation.

If that wasn't hypocrisy, he didn't know what was.

He reached into his cassock in a rushed, hurried motion, fumbling and groping---he had to do it quickly. Nepis wasn't in any pain, but---

"I'm okay, Father Anderson---really--I don't need a bandage."

"Ye DO need it, Nepis," Anderson almost growled---a harsh, unpleasant sound that came out of wolves and jackals rather than self-respecting clergymen. He caught himself, biting the bestial noise and forcing it to abate to a parental coo. "Ye don' wan' it to get infected. Then ye won' be able tae play foor a long tiyme." Nepis started to protest and submitted to Anderson's wishes. He rubbed the dirty arm clean, purposely looking away from the blood, from the temptation. The distant din of the game still cluttered the field, punctuated with beckoning cries from the boys. He answered them too nervously, too manically....

The game went on.

He wrapped the arm in gauze, still looking away, at the grass tufts, at the too-bright sky, anywhere where there wasn't any blood. For hands so large he was pretty dexterous, but it had to be that his hand slipped and the boy's blood smeared on his broad finger---ungloved--at least until the boys were asleep---

_ God damn it...._

He caught himself, flinching.

_ Thou shall not take th' name ouf th' Laird yoor God in vain._

And let himself go again.

_ Well---God foorgive me---fuck th' Commandment. _

_ Ah'm aboot to eat th' lad's BLOOD in FROONT ouf him....an' all ah can think ouf is not tae __offend the Laird?!_

God's law as decreed by the steadfast and unbending Catholic church----all those rigid principles, stern demand of piety and the necessity of being a shining beacon squeezed him, squeezed remorse out of his bursting sweat glands, while he yearned to hold his composure again, to maintain his farce in front of the innocent lad. He strained against his urges with all his might---

The urges that he never asked for.

**_You're a curious one. You perform one hypocrisy after another: you slaughter Protestants__ in the name of a merciful and all-loving God. You pray for peace and make war. You sin when__ punishing the sinner. _**

His head wasn't clear back then---it was throbbing, swollen from the beating. Now it cleared---emptied to make room for that clear, unobscured memory---the sight of Nepis' blood made it worse.

_**Surely you have room for one more hypocrisy.**_

He couldn't finish binding the wound with a bloody finger. It was the lad's own blood, butit could get infected still---he didn't want that.

The infection...he was diseased. To be sick and not ask for God's healing---that was an offense.

Another offense to the Most High.

_ ....Ah've dun moore than gun an' offended 'Im----ah've spit in 'Is face an' mocked 'Im__an' scourged 'Im an' crucified 'Im all oover again!!!! _Through strict repition, steepinghimself in guilt, penitent, submissive to his God, hunching his enormous body over so that he might be closer to the clay from which he was made.

_ Jus' 'cause ah'm hungry._

Of course by bending down he was closer to the splotch of blood. Nepis had his eyes on the game, cheering on his teammates and forgetting about his fall, pumping his arms so that the one drop slithered the length of his arm.

His grin grew unimaginably broad, remeniscint of the grin on another individual milesaway in a cloudy capital---but he wasn't about to think about the No-Life-King now--would get him angry---furious----lusty----

He wanted it.

If nothing else---the time of day saved the boy. Had it been night, he'd be berserk, out of control, doing with no thought but sword and fire. Exercising unbelievable self-control, he smeared the blood on another towel drooping out of his cassock and finished binding the wound.

"Thar..ye're alright noo. Go off an' play, ah think ah'll ref th' rest ouf it," the Scot urged, hisvoice exhausted and worn. The spritely boy joined the rest on the well-run field, hardly noticingthe priest as he faded into the obscurity of the sidelines.

Little boys spring back really fast. He caught the pass with his head and followed it tothe goal.

"Shoot it, laddie!"

The encouragement from his dry, chapped lips ricocheted paralyzing in his memory.

_**Go ahead. Shoot. **_

He knew he couldn't win. He was out of his league.

The ball landed wide, and the goalie intercepted the muddy globe.

Training, drilling...he could drill for a hundredyears...It wouldn'tve prepared him for that first undead encounter. One recourse. He had a gun---one shot---his soul'd be damned, but it was better than to live dead, sucking the life out of people who didn't deserve it. Damned once or damned twice----either way, he lost all hope of salvation.

_**Drink. Eat. Be**_

_ Merry?_ A stream of acid ate at his heart. It was a straight track back then. He would'verubbed the blood off and have Nepis bandaged and back in the game. What was it, 3-7? 3-8?

_**You'd rather kill yourself? What about your Law?**_

"Father, come back! We're losing!"

_**Ah dinnae need an atheist tae remind me o' th's Laird's Commandments! **_

"We're going to win for once! It's 4-7!!"

**_Then maybe you should follow them more rigidly. Don't be like the hypocrites who pray__ on the street corners. _**

"No fair! He only plays one side!"

The gun shook in his mouth. He took a scant second to pray for his fellows' souls---who lay strewn about the city---

But the creature wouldn't let him. It engulfed him in its shadows. The soldier's entire beaten,battered frame froze under the psychokinetic power---everything melted out of focus when the monster socked him. Glass broke on the street. The last thing he heardbefore the long fangs buried into his flesh aside his gasp for air.

"5-7!"

_**God 'ave mercy...Christ 'ave mercy...Laird 'ave mercy.**_

"6-7!"

_**What will St. Peter do when half of a human knocks at Heaven's gate?**_

"Tie!!"

It was quick and over before he knew it. The icy bite, that sick draining feelingplus a dull nausea at the shot of poison---the creature dislodged its fangs and vanished. Things went fast after that. It wasn't long before he got himself discharged after biting a terrified private's throat.

"8-7!!"

_ Havin' a crisis foor as long God wills ye tae live..._

"Did ya do that on purpose, Father?"

_ A fork burns ye._

He shook his head with a good deal less energy than he had when the gamestarted. He looked old---thinking on something painful does that---

"Ye did well, lads. Noo go insiyde an' gyt supper," he urged withouta smile, almost listless. The sun was particularly imposing, having drawn open the curtain of clouds far open.

_ Crawlin' tae th' sun tae gyt warm but e' hurts ye head._

"Y'alright, Father Anderson?" asked the out-of-breath goalie, watching an unusualgloom darken his 'father's' aura. As if a storm thundered overhead in the sun-streaked sky. The reply was strangely brisk.

"...Aye."

_ Drinkin' blood with ye bread._

He found himself in the same spot with the moon in place of the sun, but nowthe field was empty, the boys gone to bed. Had one of them been an insomniac andstared out the window into the cool night hoping to see their beloved Father Anderson preparing to leave to say daily Mass, they would instead see the terrifying flash of bloodthirsty canines, maniacally contorted eyes that burned a hellish green, his whole frame twisted backwards, his now gloved hands--to keep the blood of his hands, no doubt--- grasping knives as cruel and merciless as the teeth, a mad laugh racking the body surging with a monstrous energy. He was still laughing as he vanished from the field, surrounded by his tornado of blessed psalms.

_Kill...._

A severed limb erupted warm blood. The beast had just fed. A fallen head. The victim destroyed.

_KIll....._

A kidney sliced to ribbons, a liver split. His own body filled with bullet holes that closed near-instantly.

The hands and their silver blades passed God's judgement on the damned demon of Hell.

_KILl...._

The heart gushed and the monster fell to ash.

_KILL..._

The stormy thrill that pulsed in his soiled veins subsided with the work done. That was the last ofthem.

_ Kill 'em tae ease yoor black conscience? _the priest queried bitterly, staring hungrily at the mix of cold and warm liquid clinging to his knife. _Killing th' hateful half o' ye. _He fed on the bitter fruits of his labor, his lips stretched and curled in half-disgust as the liquid flowed into his mouth. He swallowed it and snarled, raging---the clatter of the blades against concrete jarred him into the realization that in a fit, he had thrown a flurry at the wall. The rest of the blood on the ends collected in a pool. His tongue lolled out, dog-like, and he hurled himself at his sustenance. _As loong as ah kill 'em, ah'm still human..._

_ Ah'm noot ae vampiyre. Vampiyres doon't kill uther vampiyres. Ah kill. Ah'm human, _he rationalized, the blood dripping down his bristly chin as he stood up, retrieving the blessed weapons. He turned his head with the sharpness of a wolf. He could sense the dawn coming on. Soon the boys would be waking. It was time for their breakfast. They always wondered why he wouldn't join them---the other priests ate at that time.

But he'd always have to decline. If God was still with him, maybe Nepis wouldn't scrape himself...maybe for once he wouldn't have to be reminded of it. Maybe he could just be a normal priest---not even a priest--just a man.

A/N: Had to insert a theory. Couldn't resist it This was sort of a fusion--Anime version of Anderson doesn't dress as a priest---but it's there where the teeth size is consistent. This is derived from the green scene in Order 07, the opening, Order 03, and Order 13. Don't hold back on the criticism, veterans.


End file.
